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Time to look at some treasure hunts coming up soon. There’s an unexpected running theme running through them.

Treasure Trail Quests are running their first event on Friday 15th April to Sunday 17th April; it’ll be in Stowmarket. Buy a book of clues for £20, either by choosing to receive a .pdf on Friday morning or a printed copy in person.

“Study the clues. Go online and research in advance. Visit the town with family, friends or get together a group of work mates then answer the puzzles. ((…)) It has been carefully crafted to be a family friendly fun challenge made up of a series of puzzles. There will be picture puzzles, word play and number play. ((…)) Entries must be received by 11.59hrs on the Sunday night. Entries can be made by email or by text or by using a submission form. Each book has a unique serial number. Only one entry per serial number. ((…)) The winner is the entry that is the first ALL correct entry drawn at random the next day, Monday at 13:00hrs. The prize is a cash award of £1000.”

The full T&C suggest that the prize rolls over if nobody gets everything 100% correct, presumably to the second hunt scheduled for St. Neots on May 13th to 15th. The same person is behind this as the Pop-Up Puzzle Room – so, while it’s by no means necessary, you might want to play his game or follow the brainteasers he posts to Facebook to get an idea of the house style.

The Armchair Treasure Hunt Club are running a Spring club event in Shrewsbury on Saturday 16th April. The club has run an event every autumn for about twenty years; additional spring events are a recent revival of previous form. “Everyone is welcome to come along and compete, whether you are a member of the club or whether you just enjoy competing in treasure hunts. Gather for the hunt at 10am for an 11am start, and it’ll probably be about tea time when the treasure is unearthed. The £25 entry fee includes lunch as well as the hunt and its prizes.” The club’s web site has a page with more information and it just might be that there are a few pre-clues on the posters worth exploring there as well.

This site’s friends at Treasure Hunts in London have a couple of events coming up as well. Between 2pm and 5pm on Saturday 26th March, the Easter Treasure Hunt at the V&A Museum looks at “…art from north of the border. Working in teams you will be solving clues and puzzles, and answering questions about the art work. As this is an Easter hunt, expect a few Easter surprises along the way. As always we will end the hunt with a wee drink as we announce the results and award prizes to the winning team.” Tickets are £20 for a single player or £38 for a pair.

Treasure Hunts in London are also organising a hunt called Rule, Britannia on, inevitably, Saturday 16th April. “The Queen’s 90th birthday takes place on 21st April 2016.To mark the occasion Treasure Hunts in London are organising a Royalty-themed Treasure Hunt. There will be themed clues to solve, puzzles, photo challenges and assignments. This hunt starts when the teams collect clue packs by the Queen Victoria Memorial, outside Buckingham Palace. It ends with a drink and prize giving at a pub near Kensington Palace.” Tickets must be pre-booked, a minimum number of teams (of 2 to 6 players) are required for the game to go ahead, and you must bring a smartphone to complete the photo challenges… and any additional tasks that might be sent out by text throughout the game. Tickets are £38 for a pair of players, £20 for a single player or £15 for a single player booking by the end of March, all including a drink at the end of the hunt.

If you know of other hunts, please send the details through. (That said, there was a Valentine’s themed hunt in early February that this site missed; the page has details of a few other interesting past hunts as well.)

This site has got somewhat slack with updating its events calendar to the point where even linking to it in this article would feel wrong. Nevertheless, there are a few things worth looking ahead to already.

The first leg of this year’s WPF Puzzle Grand Prix is in progress already, starting about half a day ago. You have until Monday evening, UK time, to identify a clear block of 90 minutes and earn as many points as possible by solving pencil-and-paper puzzles set by a team from India in the first leg of a metaphorical race around the puzzling world. Some of you may know that the puzzles are always very fine and the contest is reliably great fun; this year’s competition has an added twist to make it more accessible and help more people find their level of fun. More about that very soon, hopefully while the first leg is still in progress.

The Coney troupe of interactive theatre makers are holding a Scratch and Salon session at the Camden People’s Theatre from midday on Sunday. The “Scratch and Salon is an open event making play on the line between public space and corporate space, and exploring the ideas around the commons“. At midday, “A map will be unfurled of scratch adventures and other playful experiences to be discovered in the neighbourhood of CPT. You’ll need a mobile phone with credit to send text messages in order to play. From 3pm – We’ll reconvene in the Theatre and host a salon – first curated with provocations from speakers segueing into an open space discussion – on what it means to make play in this space, and the politics of public space and the commons“. Not immediately puzzly, but very likely to be relevant somehow; their shows always inspire interesting thoughts.

February 27th and 28th see the UK Open Puzzle and Sudoku Tournaments taking place at the Selsdon Park Hotel in Croydon; since the World Championships were held here a couple of years ago, this has surely become the spiritual home of competition puzzles in this country. The company is always excellent and it’s as close to the World Championship experience as you’re going to get.

Closer to the usual core of this site, Can You Escape? of Edinburgh are hosting a Disabled Access Day on Saturday 12th March. “Join us on Disabled Access Day between 10.30 and 12.00 to take a look around Operation Odyssey our space themed mission, giving you a chance to check if the room is suitable and have a go at some puzzles (not the ones in the room – that would be cheating!) ((…)) People taking part in Disabled Access Day can also get 30% off bookings on the day or bookings made on the day.” Clearly Can You Escape? takes accessibility seriously; see the entry in the FAQ, but also the site’s inclusion in Euan’s Guide for disabled access reviews. While it’s far from the only site to do so, Exit Games UK is not aware of anything quite like this Disabled Access Day before and this would appear to be an instant example of best practice, well worth consideration by sites up and down the country. If you want to see whether the site is right for you, e-mail Can You Escape? first because only a limited number of spaces are available.

April is set to be busy, busy, busy, though in a very good way. From 1st to 3rd April, Now Play This returns to the New Wing of Somerset House in London. It’s not clear what will be on the line-up this year as the open call is in progress; “This year we’re particularly keen on things with interesting controllers, games which deal with utopias, play in a city context, and work which encourages player creativity – but games outside these themes are also welcome.” The event is part of the larger London Games Festival, “running from 1 to 10 April 2016, the festival includes 15 official events across 10 different locations” – perhaps something exit game-related might be appropriate for the Festival Fringe?

The Canadian Caper will be running on April 9th at the Arts & Letters Club in Toronto. “A one-day only escape experience for up to 15 teams of six ((though it’s not immediately clear whether it’s 15 teams per show or 15 teams total over the three shows.)) This is very much an escape game. There will be puzzles to solve. Solving puzzles will allow you to progress through the space into new rooms where you will find new challenges and new puzzles. Ultimately your goal is to physically escape the space. Unlike a traditional escape game though there will also be actors that teams will need to interact with to gain information.” The first episode in the series was put on by a number of bloggers and their very talented friends; us UK types can just dream and be jealous, for it sounds hugely cool and it is delightful that the first episode is not just a one-off.

We don’t have it so bad in the UK, though; Saturday 16th April sees the Springtime Hunt in Shrewsbury organised by the Armchair Treasure Hunt Club. “Everyone is welcome to come along and compete, whether you are a member of the club or whether you just enjoy competing in treasure hunts. Gather for the hunt at 10am for an 11am start, and it’ll probably be about tea time when the treasure is unearthed. The £25 entry fee includes lunch as well as the hunt and its prizes. Go to the club’s website for more details of how to book your place.“

Never enough, never enough; Up The Game happens two days later. “On the 18th of April Amsterdam will host the first international Escape Room & Real Life Gaming Conference.” Their speaker list is extremely exciting with speakers from several countries. While the early bird tickets have sold out, you can still buy Advance tickets at €100 each, plus a small booking fee, plus the Dutch version of VAT, which by the way has the charming acronym of BTW.

Last year, this site proposed an industry meeting at the forthcoming live The Crystal Maze attraction; while all 32 tickets have been sold (and there are already names at the top of the waiting list) it’s going to take place on Tuesday 26th April. Maybe something else interesting might be happening around that time too, you never know…

Whether you have elaborate plans for your lunch or not, there are a few fun things you can do today between the main meal of the day and the last episode of Downton Abbey.

If you live near Preston, or even if you’re just visiting, you can get your exit game fix today at The Escape Room, who are open for business today as they are every other day. Hardcore! Are there any other sites out there who aren’t taking the day off? Will there be enough demand to make opening worthwhile? It’ll be interesting to see.

If Preston is too far to travel at little notice, there are alternatives where puzzles come to you. Dr. Bob Schaffer is running another online Holiday Puzzle Hunt. This is the fourth in the series; previous years’ hunts have been deliberately genuinely accessible and beginner-friendly yet thematic and imaginative. Experienced solvers will probably sprint through the three puzzles and the meta in a very few tens of minutes, but legitimate family fun to be enjoyed.

For a bigger challenge, East Anglia’s mobile pop-up Puzzle Room have put on a virtual Armchair Treasure Hunt to be enjoyed over the next two weeks. Thirteen cryptic questions hint at locations within East Anglia, letters of which can be extracted to reveal the location of the virtual treasure. One submitter of a correct answer will win a voucher for a team to play at the Puzzle Room in 2016; if you’re far from East Anglia and have no plans to visit, perhaps you can still enjoy the puzzles while taking part hors conours.

One more discount that arrived too late to make the previous post: Exit Games Scotland pointed to The Room of Glasgow’s deals page which has a code for a third off when you book before the end of the year to play before the middle of Feburary 2016.

Friday will be busy! This site talks about exit games most of the time and about puzzle hunts frequently. There’s good reason to talk about something different this Friday: a comedy night. Needless to say, not just any comedy night: one themed around The Crystal Maze. That’s interesting.

“Project2 curates Geekeasy ((…)) We populate the bill with emerging and award-winning acts. ((…)) Each month we pick a niche theme and throw some acts at it. Expect musical comedy, stand up, improv, sketch and a Powerpoint competition. This month we’re in The Crystal Maze, with guest comedians, improvisers and musicians competing to win a taxi ride home.”

Project2’s background is improv comedy with a sci-fi theme; the The Crystal Maze theme was announced three months ago so people will have had considerable preparation time. It would be easy to “punch down” but the genuine fandom and love for the genres that the group have shown, plus good reviews from an improv player that this site trusts, gives this site hope that more acts than not can stay on the right side of the fine line: irreverent good, impudent goo-ooo-oood, insolent bad. The show starts at 8pm at The Miller pub in Southwark, London, between London Bridge and Borough.

Other exciting things happen on Friday, too. Handmade Mysteries open an East London location at The People’s Park Tavern pub in the part of south-east Hackney best served by the 388 bus from Hackney Wick, Cambridge Heath or Bethnal Green. This is a slight remix of their original Lady Chastity’s Reserve game played in South London; the larger location permits teams of up to six, rather than up to five, and some extra gags along the way. This site just likes saying “My! Brother! Knows Karl Marx! He met him in the bushes at The People’s Park!”

If you don’t want to leave your house, there’s still fun to be had: as discussed, the 2015 edition of Pablo’s Armchair Treasure Hunt also starts on Friday, though the teaser poster will already get you started. True, there’s a hidden box to be found somewhere in the south of England, but there’s a mighty bundle of research and thinking to be done before you can even start to work out where it is!

Possibly you have heard that GCHQ have issued a Christmas card with a puzzle. Solving the first puzzle leads to a series of further puzzles (word puzzles, maths puzzles and code-breaking) unless the extremely high interest means that the web server still can’t cope with the demand. This site heard about the hunt from Intervirals, though it was also widely covered in news programmes, not least a Sky News segment featuring BrainedUp.com‘s Dr. Gareth Moore. Excellent way to get tough puzzles back in the public eye.

However, if this isn’t challenge enough for you, then in a week’s time, the 2015 edition of Pablo’s Armchair Treasure Hunt will begin. You can see a low-fi version of the hunt’s poster above; the official version is rather clearer and contains a number of clues and references which will portray some of the themes of this year’s event. The hunt itself will begin in a week’s time and will likely feature several dozen cryptic questions to solve, pictures to identify, connections to make, covert messages to discover and decrypt and doubtless much more, culminating in a physically hidden box in the south of England. The first team to discover the box wins a trophy; the team that best answers and explains all the references and hidden subtleties that have been put in place, within the month-and-a-bit time limit, also win a trophy. To get an appreciation for the form and conventions of the hunt, read through the thirty-year history of the hunt; the past hunts are available online along with their explanations, and make spectacular reading.

Ken pointed to “A puzzle for the UK” earlier today, a two-stage hunt released by Randall Munroe of xkcd comic fame to celebrate the launch of his new book, Thing Explainer. The first stage appears to be a traditional armchair treasure hunt, with hints to locations in five UK cities (London, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and Edinburgh); visiting the locations, or sending a location’s details by e-mail to the publisher, reveals the second stage of the hunt, about which less is known. Spoilers have been posted to the first stage locations, but people appear to be keeping the second part secret as requested.

“Prizes will include signed copies of Thing Explainer and limited-edition posters and mobiles. There will also be one very special first prize.” The book is written using only a set of ten hundred frequently-used English language words, notably excluding “thousand”, and some of the text of the hunt is as well. Go quickly, for the results are set to be published in about a week and a half.

Ken also pointed to Incredible Midtown: The Game, a live action walking tour hunt taking place through the “Midtown” (Bloomsbury, Holborn and St Giles) section of London.

“To get to the end, you must unravel a series of fiendish clues, solve perplexing puzzles and immerse yourself in three centuries of London history. Roam amid fine Georgian buildings, Jagger and Bowie’s favourite haunts and the sly pickpockets of the St Giles rookery. Teams of friends and strangers must collaborate with you to uncover the drama and fascinating past of this ever-intriguing corner of the capital. ((…)) Characters from Dickens novels will wander around town as you find the clues and try to solve the mystery of Midtown. ((…)) The 90 minute game will run for five weeks from November 9 to December 11. Monday to Friday only. Tickets are £12 per person and must be booked in advance.“

As well as being a live hunt and thus interesting, there is a more direct exit game connection here: Escape in Time, the company behind the very popular Secret Studio London, refer to it as their next adventure. An excellent heritage!

An exciting event taking place north of San Francisco is The Headlands Gamble, as discussed on the Puzzle Hunters community on Google+ and the Puzzle Hunters group on Facebook. The game advertises itself as “an extraordinary weekend trip for two with a thrilling storyline woven through it. You and a partner will be the detectives in an immersive mystery story set amidst some of the most beautiful locations in the North Bay. You’ll drive from location to location in a custom car, meeting characters, unearthing clues and following leads while experiencing all that Marin County has to offer.” It’s not cheap at US$1,950 for two players, but that covers the cost of “a beautiful rental car; one bedroom at a homey hotel by the seaside; all your meals, each at a highlight local venue; an itinerary of out-of-the way sights, planned for you; a two-day long theatrical experience just for you“.

Reports suggest it’s more of a detective experience than a puzzle experience, but if you want a troupe of actors to put on a two-day-long interactive show just for an audience of two, this might be the state of the art. People have hinted at the famous Punchdrunk immersive theatre company putting on travel experiences, but there is not yet evidence of this being widely available; The Headlands Gamble is a game that the well-heeled don’t have to wait to play.

A little too late for the above logo, one of the UK’s longest-running hunt traditions is gearing up for its annual Christmastime conundrum. In 1985, an IT consultant at Logica, Paul Coombs, had the idea for an armchair treasure hunt, vaguely comparable in style to that of the Masquerade book from a few years previously, complete with treasure buried somewhere in the south of England. He co-ran the first four year’s hunts and ran more in later years. Every year but once since then, an annual hunt has been set for members of Logica and their friends.

Historically, Logica have provided some backing for prizes (moderate cash prizes, but often many of them). After Logica’s merger with CGI a couple of years ago, this year the cash prizes have been eliminated and the ties with the company have been severed. From now on these will be referred to as Pablo’s Armchair Treasure Hunts, after the crossword compiler-style nom de guerre by which Coombs was known. This year sees the hunt open to allcomers and a renewed push to attract first-time players with a resources section, so perhaps it’s a good year to get into the habit. The hunt is to be respected for its tradition as well as its creativity.

Happily, a full archive of 28 hunts, plus solutions and setter’s notes exists, often with tales from those who played each year. This is the best way to pick up the form. Taking the 2012 hunt as an example, it’s not uncommon that there are pictures to identify, cryptic questions (usually about the year’s events – though, historically, there have been references to Logica and Sean Bean in many years) to answer, anagrams to crack, some hidden messages and a final code. Answering the questions gives you the source material to crack the code which will give you the directions to the physical hidden treasure.

While there is glory in being the first to find the treasure, there’s also a prize awarded for the most complete solutions, measured through a scoring system. Question answers, decoded references, solved directions and more each earn points. If there are, say, thirty teams submitting answers to a year’s hunt, then a question that is solved by 29 teams and missed by one team will earn one point for the 29 teams that solve it. A harder question that is solved by two teams and missed by 28 will earn 28 points for the two teams that solve it, and so on. In this way, you can make meaningful, measurable partial progress even without finding the treasure outright.

That’s the basic form; the hunt varies from year to year. For instance, the 2013 hunt features a mighty jigsaw, but this is only the starting-point; further clues were wound around the rest of the Web, including three Facebook accounts, an assortment of virtual treasure sites and more. Possibly the most impressive of all was (Coombs’, naturally) 1992 hunt which dispensed with overt questions altogether; instead, there were dozens of images, which came from sets of images with one missing. Identifying the missing item from each set sent you on your way. Brilliant!

This post is happening today because the “poster” (actually, an online video) for the 2014 hunt has been released. Form suggests there are likely to be some clues to this year’s event at least alluded to in there. The text is a reference to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; if that turns out to be the theme, or one of the themes, then it’s likely to be a popular choice. Further details will be teased out in a week’s time, with the puzzle itself released in mid-December.